


moth's wings

by spycaptain



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-16 23:39:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4644372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spycaptain/pseuds/spycaptain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naruto splits Iruka’s life in two halves, before and after. Before is a boy curled up at his mother's side, talking about going home, watching movies and playing games while his father makes them bowls of ice-cream in the kitchen. After is something else entirely, a new future molding itself in Iruka’s screams while his mother’s body lies on top of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	moth's wings

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to mstigergun and Chris, two amazing friends who gave me the courage to post this - the next two chapters should come in a week or two.

Naruto enters his life the same way he always does: in a crash of iridescent violence. The Namikaze family is visiting the city in support of restoration efforts, to promote peace and prosperity and the end of the war. Iruka sees the blonde boy and his family from across the street, hears the cries of a unhappy child, and thinks to himself that babies are just too noisy. He turns to his mother as a wave of heat hits him and a bomb goes off behind them both.

Naruto splits Iruka’s life in two halves, before and after. Before is a boy curled up at his mother's side, talking about going home, watching movies and playing games while his father makes them bowls of ice-cream in the kitchen. After is something else entirely, a new future molding itself in Iruka’s screams while his mother’s body lies on top of him.

-

Iruka begins to put it all together the second semester of his ninth year of school, in a history class where they learn about the Hokage: ancient leaders from a time before now, when their country was nothing more than a small village fighting to survive a war it had no place being in.

The list is not that long, one hundred and fifty of them, their legacy reduced to ink on a thin paper page in a high school textbook. But he remembers some of them, somehow, remembers a lonely childhood and tea with an old friend, he remembers a mask and a smile that he could only read in the eyes, and he remembers Naruto, the little blonde harbinger of everything awful in his life. His Naruto, standing tall before the village, smiling beside his family.

He remembers all this like it actually happened - like these people actually happened, and it upsets him, this loss of things he has never known. There’s an emptiness filling him in waves and he feels like he is drowning.

Hatake, Uzumaki. There are things that are missing, he realizes. These are the other things you need to find to feel whole again.

-

Iruka meets Anko a few days later. She is a small, furious thing, huddled in the corner of a spare room at the nurse’s office. He makes the mistake of not noticing her first. She makes him suffer for it.

A fist to the side of his head and Iruka finds himself sprawled on the ground, ears ringing and unsure of exactly what he did to deserve such a terrible day. When the spinning stops he looks up to see the ghost of a girl standing over him. She’s shaking, her fists clenched at her sides, and he sees her now and as she was. Tiny and terrified, tall and terrifying, older and wiser and his best friend.

“Get out,” she spits and raises her hand to hit him again.

“No,” he says.

“Go away,” she cries, pushing him away at the same moment she grips him tighter, making herself small beside him.

They sit like that for hours, with his hand hand rubbing circles against her back, before she speaks. “I missed you, Iruka.” she confesses, finally.

“I missed you too, Anko.” he says.

-

He forgets what it is about Mizuki that makes him nervous, pushes the uncomfortable feeling aside, until the day finally comes when he learns to trust his instinct.

Mizuki stabs him in the back - literally - when they are seventeen. This is unexpected, Iruka thinks, as he feels the sharp metal shred the muscle down his spine.

His back spasms, his knees give out, and he slides to the floor with a whimper. Mizuki rolls Iruka’s body over and grins, lifting his foot over Iruka’s head.

“You have no idea how long I have been waiting to do this,” he says, face blank, before bringing his foot down and crushing Iruka’s nose.

 

Much later, Anko lets it slip that Mizuki went missing some time during Iruka’s recovery.

“He didn’t put up much of a fight,” she says. “Too busy sobbing and pissing himself and begging for mercy.”

“How do you know this?” Iruka asks.

She shrugs and ruka never gets an answer.

-

The next few years go by in a blur of school and part time jobs to pay off his hospital debt. He looks for his friends - for a boy with a toothpick, for two brunette men with laughter lines who keep him smiling - but can never find them.

On a particularly lonely day he starts to think that maybe none of it is true, that maybe he did make it all up, that he and Anko are just two fucked up war orphans who made up a better life, when he is barreled down by a blonde boy with angry eyes. They stare at each other, Naruto’s eyes widening with realization, and Iruka finds himself tackled and fiercely held.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” Naruto squeezes him tighter. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Iruka laughs breathlessly, hugging Naruto Uzumaki back. Uzumaki, Uzumaki, Uzumaki - one name down, one less empty mystery. “Around, I guess?”

He pulls away to look at Naruto, and it’s almost the same as it was before: a small, underfed boy with bright eyes smiling up at him, his fierce grin almost enough to hide the scrapes and bruises that are scattered across his malnourished body.

“Life is never kind to you,” Iruka frowns.

Naruto shrugs, like this is nothing new, or at least nothing that will ever bother him.

“We’re in a war, I don’t think life is kind to anyone.”

But Iruka just got a two bedroom flat in a shitty part of town for far less than he should have paid for it, so finding Naruto might be a kindness in its own right. When he tells Anko she grins at him and offers to buy him a drink if it all goes tits up, but does not attempt to stop him, instead wishing him luck with his new loud roommate.

Naruto moves in a week later.

-

Iruka gives up  at twenty four, settling for Anko and Naruto. No need to be greedy when two of the most important people in life found their ways back to him. Besides, with Sakura coming over more frequently, and Naruto’s recent discovery that Sasuke might be living across town, Iruka's life is never boring. Lonely, sometimes, but he keeps himself busy and doesn't think about it.

“I’m sorry,” Naruto says one night, without preamble. He’s sitting at their kitchen table, his head resting in folded arms, waiting for his ramen to cool.

Iruka sets his book down on the table with a sigh. “Why do I feel like this is over something you have no reason to apologize for?”

Across from him, Naruto avoids his gaze, staring instead at the cup of ramen between them. But Iruka knows that look well enough to know that eventually Naruto will open up, he just needs to be patient enough to wait for it to happen.

“It’s not fair,” the blonde boy finally shares, “that I’ve found so many people, but you can’t even find Kakashi.”

Iruka tries to hide the look that he is sure is on his face. “It’s not unfair, either, Naruto. It’s just how things are.”


End file.
